While underwater archaeology focused on historic shipwrecks has a long and distinguished history, submerged sites dating to earlier periods are not as well known. In Landscape beneath the waves, Caroline Wickham-Jones argues that mainstream archaeology has often failed to engage with underwater landscapes due to a lack of understanding of the geological processes responsible for their submersion, as well as underwater archaeology being a highly specialised field. Her book therefore seeks to provide a basic overview of the primary formation processes that create submerged sites, the techniques for investigating them and a global review of underwater landscapes and sites. Overall, she largely accomplishes two of these tasks and provides a useful summary of underwater landscape archaeology. As a volume of the Studying Scientific Archaeology series, which is aimed at university students and focuses on the application of scientific techniques to understand the human past, both the style of the book and its content are well suited to a student readership. It is crafted like a textbook with clearly written, concise sections, inset boxes explaining key terms and concepts, and numerous illustrations.
Landscape beneath the waves comprises 13 chapters organised into three sections: 1) understanding and reconstructing sea-level fluctuations; 2) techniques and methods for investigating submerged sites; and 3) global examples of submerged landscapes. The first and third sections are the most successful. The introduction clearly lays out the importance of submerged sites, specifically for the archaeology of early humans, Terminal Pleistocene foragers, and Early Holocene hunter-fisher-farmers: all populations that would have experienced lower sea levels than today. Significant archaeology dating to these periods is now underwater. The book builds on the concept of “seamless archaeology” (p. 4)—going from land, to intertidal zone, to the sea—to understand the landscape across these different zones. It highlights the importance of submerged sites, not only for archaeologists, but also for developers and the public writ large.
Chapter 2 is brief, providing an interesting summary of early accounts of Doggerland. Research in Europe, such as that at Doggerland, has been heavily influenced by industrial funding and collaboration, which has not been the case in other geographic areas, such as North America. This chapter and many others reflect an overall focus on North-west Europe, particularly Early Holocene adaptations and early settlement on the British Isles. There are many examples from the Orkney Islands, the author's area of expertise.
Chapters 3 and 4 deal with sea-level processes, mechanics, coastline changes and methods of reconstructing past sea levels. Chapter 4 includes an overview of sea-level index points and how they are used to reconstruct relative sea level. There is also a good discussion of the difference between maps and models, which is a critical point that is often forgotten. These chapters are both useful summaries.
Chapter 5 outlines how sites form and are preserved, and states that changing sea levels were probably the norm rather than the exception for ancient societies, particularly those living in coastal settlements. This is a brief chapter, essentially acting as a concise introduction to the key factors that create submerged sites, including the rate of water-level change, tectonic action, the energy of waves and currents, and the effects of local topography and geology.
Chapters 6 and 7 deal with methodologies, including remote sensing, sediment analyses, modelling and exploration. Overall, methods and their application are underrepresented in the book. For example, there is a single paragraph dedicated to both remote-operated vehicles and autonomous underwater vehicles and their applications. Additionally, there are notably few comments on diving, excavation methodologies or sampling strategies except for sediment cores. These are significant and unique tools for investigating submerged landscapes and would have merited greater mention. While this book is not meant to be a technical handbook, such as others dealing with underwater archaeology (e.g. Green Reference Green2009), more detail concerning techniques would have provided a better introduction to the archaeology of submerged landscapes.
Chapter 8 is focused on managing underwater cultural heritage, which is a useful and important contribution. It is primarily an outline of management policies and procedures in the UK. It may have been better placed at the end of the book after the case studies, however.
The next three chapters (9–12) deal with regional case studies of submerged landscapes and sites. While ideally these case studies would be used to illustrate the application of different techniques, the techniques are somewhat lost as they are embedded within long discussions of submerged landscapes, many of which have yet to produce valid, in situ archaeological evidence. The key marine prehistoric submerged sites are discussed, however, and these chapters are well referenced.
The conclusion has a very sombre tone: “this is a book about loss” (p. 167). Three examples of severe water-level changes and their impact on local communities in the recent past are presented. While there are certainly challenges that face us in terms of sea-level rise, these are fundamentally different from sea-level changes in the past, which were rarely catastrophic events such as the historic examples detailed here. Perhaps moving Chapter 8 to be the conclusion or combining these two chapters would have ended the book on a more positive, hopeful note, emphasising the importance of submerged landscapes and the need to protect these unique and significant archaeological sites.
Overall, the book has a clear message: despite often being overlooked, submerged landscapes are vital for addressing many diverse research questions, particularly those surrounding early human migrations. Furthermore, knowledge of submerged sites is required for a holistic understanding of the past. Essentially, landscape archaeology cannot be done without consideration of the actual landscape in the past, and much of the prehistoric landscape is now submerged.
